


fix you

by starkravingcap



Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Mentions of PTSD, Tony Stark Has A Heart, War Veteran
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-19
Updated: 2015-02-19
Packaged: 2018-03-13 19:33:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3393653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starkravingcap/pseuds/starkravingcap
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Justin lives because he looks as though he is dead. There are three holes in his body, jagged and ripped, and blood soaks through his uniform like water soaks the deserts of Afghanistan when it rains. He lives because when they approach him, he is still, his chest hardly moving, his lungs barely working, and they find another target who bleeds wealth, power, and genius. Justin lives because in the commotion, even though his convoy has just been blown up and his best friend is missing, Lieutenant Colonel James Rhodes kneels over him and covers his wounds with pressure that makes his head spin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	fix you

Justin lives because he looks as though he is dead. There are three holes in his body, jagged and ripped, and blood soaks through his uniform like water soaks the deserts of Afghanistan when it rains. He lives because when they approach him, he is still, his chest hardly moving, his lungs barely working, and they find another target who bleeds wealth, power, and genius. Justin lives because in the commotion, even though his convoy has just been blown up and his best friend is missing, Lieutenant Colonel James Rhodes kneels over him and covers his wounds with pressure that makes his head spin.

Justin lives, and he is sent home to Raleigh, North Carolina to recover from the holes that Stark Industries ripped into his flesh on a hazy Thursday afternoon. He goes to two different hospitals; the first one fixes the bullet wounds – they cut him open and go inside, pulling out crunched up pieces of metal and slivers of shrapnel, and then they sew up the wounds with special thread that will dissolve in a few weeks. His mother sends him to the second hospital, because Justin cannot sleep, or speak properly, or sit up straight, and sometimes he has tremors and he stutters. His mother takes him to this hospital, and he is twenty one years old and all alone, save for the stitches in his side and the voices in his head. 

Justin’s mother doesn’t come back to the hospital to get him, but he has a room there now that he decorated all by himself. It has pictures of his parents, his brother Scott and his sister Lucy, who are both in high school and still visit him sometimes. He has pictures of a man and a woman – one is an army officer, the other an airman. He keeps those to remember them, because the doctors told him that they had not made it. Justin has lots of blankets, for when he gets cold, and some nice pillows, and even some pictures that he drew in art therapy.

Dr. Carson says that he’s doing well for someone who has seen such terrible things. Dr. Carson also says that Justin is responding well to things like art therapy and group discussion; Justin doesn't like group discussion, but he finds his home there in the stories that the others tell, that are just like his. He still stutters when he talks, but no one here makes fun of him. 

“Justin, you have a visitor.”

He gets visitors lots of times. Sometimes his mother comes, with news of his father, but she doesn't stay long because she cries when he can't sit still. Sometimes his brother and sister come, and that hurts because they are getting so old so quickly, and Scott would like to join the United States Marine Corps when he turns eighteen, and Lucy wants to be a nurse. 

Others times, it's the man with the fancy car and the light in his chest, with the scratchy goatee and the expensive suits. He doesn’t know his name. He is a nice man – a celebrity, Dr, Carson says – but he always looks so sad when he meets Justin. Justin isn't sure why. 

“Heya, Justin,” comes the voice from his doorway. It's the fancy man, again. He comes every month, and each time he brings something new with him as a gift. Justin likes his gifts, “How's it going?”

Justin smiles at him and nods. His head shakes like he's on a wooden roller coaster, back and forth, back and forth, trembling. The man steps into his room and stands in front of him, holding a box in his hands. He puts the box down on the table that sits beside Justin's bed, and he reaches down to wrap Justin in a warm hug. The man doesn't let go for a while. The light in his chest feels cold against Justin’s skin through his shirt.

When he lets go, the man sits down across from him at the little plastic table that Justin is allowed to eat dinner at. He claps his hands in front of him and smiles with all his teeth, and Justin thinks it's a nice smile. It's a warm smile. 

“Brought you something,” the man says, poking at the box. It's only wrapped in brown paper, but gifts are gifts and he will gladly take what he can get, “I think you’ll like it. It's, ah, just a prototype right now. But you’ll be the very first one to try it.”

His hands shake too much sometimes to do anything, so the man helps him rip the paper off and toss it on the ground, but Justin does the box inside all by himself. Inside the box are two little bracelets that are made of metal, shiny and curved and new. He looks at the bracelets, then up at the man, looking for an explanation.

“What a-are they?” Justin asks, and he frowns at his stutter.

“Stabilizers,” the man says, watching carefully, “Go ahead, put them on.”

Justin puts them on, and his hands stop shaking. It’s immediate, indefinite, and his stomach drops at the way he can move now, unimpeded by his own brain. He lifts them up, holds them in front of him, and spreads his fingers wide. 

“I-I-I,” Justin starts, and his head shakes back and forth a few times against his will, “I don’t un-understand.”

The man holds up his own hands like a mirror, palms facing Justin, and wiggles his fingers. Justin does the same, and they still work, steady and still. 

“They’re to stop your hands from shaking, so you can do more stuff,” the man says, and he links his fingers together and drops his hands, “I made ‘em for you. There’s a bit of science behind it, but whatever, that’s boring, point is, now you can draw better in art therapy.”

“How did you know?” Justin asks, and he’s impressed with himself for saying the words perfectly. The man smiles at him, points at the pictures on his wall.

“You should frame them.” 

Justin shakes his head and smiles, “N-no, no, no I give those to Mom w-when she visits, Mom takes them.”

The light in the man’s chest is distracting sometimes, because it glows so brightly, and sometimes Justin wants to ask about it, to ask why it’s there, but he doesn’t want to upset this man, this person that has been so kind to him. That has fixed him, he thinks, staring down at the metal bracelets. 

They sit there in silence for a little bit, looking at each other and around the room, until the man speaks so softly that it reminds Justin of one of his doctors. 

“I hear you’re doing better,” he says, but he doesn’t meet Justin’s eyes, “They’ve almost completely solved some of your neurological symptoms.” 

He doesn’t say it, but Justin knows he is thinking things like _except the shaking, except the stutter._

“Dr. C-Carson says I can go home one day,” Justin says in agreement, running his hand across one of the bracelets, “Once I get fixed up. Only, he s-says that the b-b-bad dreams won’t stop.”

“They don’t,” The man agrees, and Justin wonders how he knows, “But one day they just won’t hurt as much, anymore. It’ll just be something that happens to you.”

Justin looks at him, and suddenly he longs to be out of this hospital, to be home with his family and see his brother and sister, and maybe even have a job. Maybe he could be friends with this man when he gets out of the hospital, too. He’d like that.

“I want to go home,” Justin says, and the man’s face breaks the same way his mother’s face breaks just before she leaves. He wants to take it back, to put the easy acceptance back on this man’s face, because Justin wants him to _stay_ , “I don’t think Mom wants m-me to come home. I think she’s embarrassed.”

She is. He can see it on his mother’s face when she visits, the red flush, the awkward conversations they have. Justin hasn’t changed much since his accident. He knows where he was, and that he was a soldier and that he was a very, very brave man. He doesn’t remember how he got shot, mostly, or who was there, save for the moments that he dreams about the pain, about how the bullets had sounded as they had torn his body up inside – but he knows that there was an ambush. Dr. Carson tells him that he is the same man as he was before he went to war – and maybe this is true physically, Justin thinks, but something in his head is different. He wants to fix it for his mother, so that she won’t be embarrassed, and he won’t be ashamed of himself for not being strong enough to fix his own head.

“She shouldn’t be,” the man says, fidgeting with his hands, “You were injured serving your country. Nothing embarrassing about that, J.”

“Why does your chest light up?” He asks, before he can stop himself, and he kicks himself for asking, “S-sorry.”

The man shakes his head, “No, it’s—I got this the same time that you got those,” He opens the top couple buttons on his shirt and points with his other hand at Justin’s side, right where the bullet holes used to be. They’re just circular scars, now, “I was, ah, I was in the car with you, Justin. When it got blown up. I had just done a weapons presentation, and I was with you and two other soldiers – the ones you have on your wall, over there – and we were attacked. And I got this, see these scars? The light is called an arc reactor. When we were attacked, I got some shrapnel from an explosive stuck in my chest. This thing keeps it from tearing holes in my heart.”

He was _there_ , “Do you have bad dreams?”

“All the time.”

A phone rings. The man buttons up his shirt, hiding the light away again, and pulls out a piece of glass. The screen flashes, and the man looks between it and Justin. 

“Work stuff,” he says morosely, like he doesn’t want to go, “I should get back to the office.”

“Dr. Carson says you’re a celebrity. What d-do you do?” Justin asks, a last ditch effort to keep him there longer.

The man’s mouth twitches. He looks upset.

“I try to help.”

When the man gets up, he comes over to Justin and wraps him up in his arms. Justin’s hands don’t shake anymore, so now he can hug back properly. It’s nice to be able to do that. The man clutches him tightly, and before he pulls back, Justin hears him whisper.

“I’m sorry.”


End file.
